Inhibition of Poor Exemplars in the Lexical Decision Task and Evidence of Automatic and Attentional Priming.

Sanza, James

The growing literature on semantic memory suggests that many concepts normally believed to belong to certain semantic categories functionally belong to other categories. This determination can be explored by a variety of priming methodologies in which a subject's reaction time is analyzed while making certain judgements about a visually presented word stimulus. To explore whether poor exemplars of natural categories are stored in the same memory location as are good exemplars, 100 native English-speaking subjects made lexical decision responses by pressing appropriate telegraph keys as they looked into a three-field tachistoscope. The results indicated that an automatic mechanism is involved in facilitating retrieval of good exemplars, and an attentional mechanism is involved in inhibiting retrieval of poor exemplars from semantic memory. (Author/JAC)